LA/San Fran Parking requirements cause traffic and drive up rents. Let’s get rid of them.

"It's only a few more miles, honey, and we will see the grandkids in San Francisco"

October 11, 2016 By Stephen Frank 1 Comment

San Fran is in the process of ending the requirement that new housing must have parking spaces—instead they must have bike racks.  Think Grandma from Vallejo is going to ride her bike to visit the grandkids?  They are also limiting the number of spaces for commercial properties as well.  The idea is to force people to walk, use the bus or train or bike to visit clients.  Looks like an excellent way to end businesses not close to train or bus stops.  Also a super way to force families and small businesses to leave town.  That is what the elitists that can afford to Uber and limo’s prefer.

“Let’s ditch those parking requirements and make LA into a less stop-and-go town.

So let’s make the change. Let’s get rid of parking minimums and allow new apartments to be built without parking. People without parking are much less likely to drive, and less driving means less traffic. Plus, if new housing doesn’t bring new cars along with it, angry NIMBYs are much less likely to oppose new projects, and we’ll be one step closer to building the housing we need to keep our rents from rising right on into the stratosphere.

PS: Hate ugly strip malls? Guess who you should blame? Parking requirements, that’s who.”

This effort has now turned to the burgeoning Third World city of Los Angeles—and that is really what Measure M, a $120 billion tax increase is about—the creation of more government transportation, including walking, and then at City Hall limit the parking spaces.  Moscow or Hillary could not be more devious.

Parking requirements cause traffic and drive up rents. Let’s get rid of them.

Rent Is Too Damn High, 8/10/16

Everybody in LA can agree on one thing – traffic blows hard. Harder, even, than these guys:

Hate traffic? Blame parking.

But here’s a secret: people don’t cause traffic. Cars do. And you know what makes people get cars? Parking. If you’ve got nowhere to put your car when you arrive, you aren’t going to drive, and you aren’t going to contribute to traffic. Research has shown that for every 10% increase in parking, 7.7% more people commute with a car.

Hate high rent? Blame parking.

That’s a bad start. But it gets worse. Parking is also driving up your rent. Building parking spaces is incredibly expensive – each underground parking spot in LA costs about $35,000. Even if your unit includes “free” parking, you’re paying for the cost of that parking in your rent check every month, whether you want to or not. Parking is cheaper to build above ground (if you can call $27,000 cheap), but then it takes up valuable space for apartments. All those dollar signs have an impact – Donald Shoup, a legendary UCLA professor who hates parking even more than we do, has calculated that requiring parking reduces the number of units in new apartment buildings by 13%.

But parking is even more insidious than that. Often, when a new housing project is proposed, one of the first things that angry neighbors (NIMBYs) yell about is traffic. Sometimes, those angry neighbors successfully stop housing from being built on those grounds, and we desperately need all the housing we can get tocontain our skyrocketing rents.

Then why the hell do we require all new buildings to include huge amounts of parking?

You’d think, then, that developers might stop providing parking. But they can’t, because we did something really, really dumb. We’ve created a system that requires parking to be provided with all new projects. For an apartment building, you need a minimum of 1 space for every studio, 1.5 spaces for every one bedroom, and 2 spaces for every two bedroom unit. For restaurants it’s even crazier – 1 space for every 100 square feet of restaurant area. That means even a small restaurant, about the size of your average Chipotle, requires 25 parking spots. That’s more parking area than restaurant area.

We can do better. transit and ridesharing are transforming LA. Let’s stop requiring parking.

“But LA was built for cars, people will never give them up!” cry haters everywhere. You’re right, LA has been built for cars so far. That doesn’t mean it has to stay that way forever. If we want the city to be different, we’re going to have to do things differently. Besides, a couple of modern miracles have made it much easier to get around LA without a car – public transit and ridesharing.

Over the past 25 years, LA has transformed itself into a city with respectable public transit. It’s not the best in the country, but we’ve come a hell of a long way. And if ⅔ of us vote for the new transit measure in November, Metro will be able to build even more lines in the years to come.

Then there is ride sharing. If you drive less than 10,000 miles a year, using Lyft or Uber to get around is more affordable than owning your own car. Not everyone has to drive everywhere. These days, we’ve got options.

Let’s ditch those parking requirements and make LA into a less stop-and-go town.

So let’s make the change. Let’s get rid of parking minimums and allow new apartments to be built without parking. People without parking are much less likely to drive, and less driving means less traffic. Plus, if new housing doesn’t bring new cars along with it, angry NIMBYs are much less likely to oppose new projects, and we’ll be one step closer to building the housing we need to keep our rents from rising right on into the stratosphere.

PS: Hate ugly strip malls? Guess who you should blame? Parking requirements, that’s who.

Oakland council approves sweeping reductions to parking for new developments

Oakland council approves sweeping reductions to parking for new developments

By ERIN BALDASSARI | ebaldassari@bayareanewsgroup.com
PUBLISHED: September 20, 2016 at 11:22 pm | UPDATED: September 21, 2016 at 4:16 pm


OAKLAND — For the first time in over half a century, the City Council approved sharp reductions to its parking requirements, which advocates say will make it less expensive to develop housing, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the quality of life for residents.

Oakland’s parking regulations were drafted in 1965, when cars were king, highways were slicing through neighborhoods and the city was widening streets at the expense of sidewalks and safety, said Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich, who also serves as a BART board director. In many ways, he said, the new parking regulations approved by the council Tuesday are a return to a time when cities were built for pedestrians and trolleys, not cars.

A car exits the underground parking of one of the Uptown Apartment buildings in downtown Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group)

“Even when Oakland was retrofitted for automobiles, it didn’t fundamentally change the city’s form, and that form is really pedestrian-oriented,” he said. “It’s all wired for walkability.”

Walkability is just one of the positive outcomes that the city is hoping to achieve with the new parking regulations, said Matt Nichols, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s director of transportation policy.

The changes reduce the amount of parking required for residential and commercial buildings throughout the city, with the largest reductions concentrated in areas closest to major transit hubs, such as downtown Oakland or at BART stations. In those areas, the new regulations reduce the required parking to zero and instead set a cap on the maximum amount of parking allowed.

The regulations provide incentives — and in some cases, requirements — for developers to offer car sharing spaces or AC Transit bus passes. The new rules also require property owners to charge tenants separately for parking, rather than including it with the rent, unless those tenants live in affordable housing.

The council approved amendments to the proposal that requires a review of the new regulations in two years and creates a method for the city to ensure that car sharing spaces or transit passes are maintained even when a new building changes owners.

Nichols said the changes do not mean developers won’t be building any new parking, but that they will instead be more thoughtful about how much parking is actually needed, rather than being bound to provide a certain amount of spaces mandated by the city. By separating the cost of parking from rent, Nichols said residents who don’t drive will no longer be forced to subsidize their neighbors who do.

At The Uptown, a 665-unit apartment complex in the heart of downtown Oakland, residents Brittany and Lawrence Smith said they ditched their car when they moved to San Francisco and haven’t looked back. At the time, their landlord in the city was asking for $300 per month for a parking space. It’s around $100 per month at The Uptown, they said, but at nearly $3,000 per month for rent, they said the extra fee wasn’t worth the added convenience of a car.


“We just walk everywhere,” Brittany Smith said. “Everything is so centrally located.”Lawrence and Brittany Fritz, walk from their apartment in the Uptown Apartments in downtown Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. The Fritz’s do not own a car and use other means to get around including BART and Lyft. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group)

That’s fine for the downtown areas, said Darlene Allegro, who lives in East Oakland, but not her neighborhood. Getting downtown can take hours without a car, because she doesn’t live near a BART station and taking the bus requires several transfers, she said.

Jennifer West, a program manager for TransForm, a transportation and housing advocacy nonprofit, said some older developments included parking spaces that aren’t always needed. TransForm in 2014 released the GreenTrip parking database, which, for the first time, created a report showing there was a 30 percent vacancy rate in parking lots at 80 apartment buildings across the Bay Area, representing $198 million in built parking that was going unused.

The added cost of parking, which the city estimates to be up to $80,000 per space, hits low-income residents the hardest, since they are less likely to own a car and more likely to take transit than other residents, West said.

Jeff Levin, the policy director for the East Bay Housing Organizations, said Oakland’s new parking regulations, while a step in the right direction, don’t go far enough to ensure that developers pass on the reduced costs of building fewer parking spaces to new residents.

“The price of housing is being generated by the demand side,” Levin said. “If (developers) are able to build it more cheaply, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will transfer that to the consumer. It may just benefit their bottom line.”Darlene Allegro, of Oakland, finds a metered parking space in downtown Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group)

Rather than give developers a “gift” in the form of reduced parking requirements, Levin said the city should require developers to use the savings to build some portion of moderate income housing, or housing for residents who make too much to qualify for federally subsidized housing, but not enough to actually afford market-rate rents.

Although city officials hinted that developers could use those cost savings to build more affordable or moderate-income housing, the new regulations do not require it.

“The city seems to be concerned that development is not feasible enough in Oakland, and they still need to bend over backwards to accommodate developers,” Levin said. “But we all know Oakland is a hot market.”

Oakland had the fourth-highest rental costs for available one-bedroom apartments in the nation as of April, according to the real estate website Zumper.com, which regularly compiles rental market reports.

City officials say Oakland’s affordable housing strategy is a multi-pronged approach that does not rely solely on parking reductions to induce affordable housing development. The City Council in April approved an affordable housing impact fee, which charges developers a one-time fee to build market-rate housing. Developers can build affordable or moderate-income housing in lieu of the fee, said Erica Derryck, a spokeswoman for Schaaf. The council also placed Measure KK on the ballot, which would allot $100 million to preserve affordable housing throughout the city.

Requiring moderate income housing in an amount equivalent to the reduced cost of building fewer parking spaces won’t help bring the cost of building housing down, Nichols said, and Derryck said the city would like to see housing built for all income levels.

“There’s not one silver bullet,” she said. “We have to employ a number of different strategies.”

Although not the most radical of changes, Radulovich said the relaxed parking requirements raise the bar for other cities to rethink their own auto-oriented policies. San Francisco and Berkeley have already passed similar reforms, he said, and other cities may be following suit soon.

“San Jose has aspirations to be more like San Francisco or Oakland,” Radulovich said. “Hopefully this will inspire them and smaller cities, as well.”

Urban planners want ‘No Parking Any Time’

Urban planners want LA’s motto to be ‘No Parking Any Time’: Susan Shelley

This Aug. 24, 2016 staff file photo shows the faint outline of lettering on the side of a wall at Rocketdyne in Canoga Park. The site is being razed for development. Photo by John McCoy/Los Angeles Daily News

By Susan Shelley, LA Daily News

POSTED: 08/30/16, 4:14 PM PDT | UPDATED: 18 HRS AGO

3 COMMENTS

This Aug. 24, 2016 staff file photo shows part of the Rocketdyne campus being demolished.Photo by John McCoy/Los Angeles Daily News

Just before the backers of the anti-development Neighborhood Integrity Initiative submitted more than enough signatures to put the measure before the voters, they met with L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.

If the city would come up with its own plan to limit oversized developments, the group said, they would not go forward with the initiative.

Mayor Garcetti made a concession. He offered to notify the public of closed-door meetings between city officials and developers.

That wasn’t nearly enough for the initiative backers, who think closed-door meetings should be banned altogether, and it’s hard to argue with that.

Demolition of the buildings on the historic former Rocketdyne site in Canoga Park is now underway in preparation for what the developer is calling a “sustainable urban village” of about 4,000 housing units. As recently as June, City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield addressed public concerns about an excessively large development at the site by saying, “nothing has been submitted to the city for this location.”

Has Councilmember Blumenfield or other city officials held closed-door meetings with the developer or lobbyists and consultants about the Rocketdyne site? The public lacks even the right to know.

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is aimed at stopping the out-of-control “spot zoning” that allows oversized developments to be approved in places where they otherwise would be prohibited.

One purpose of zoning and community plans is to provide consistency over time, so that when people buy property, whether for a home or business, they know what they’re buying. A home on a quiet street of single-family residences won’t suddenly have a strip mall or hotel as a next-door neighbor.

“Spot zoning” to allow more height and density can have an extremely negative impact on the surrounding neighborhoods, especially if the minimum requirements for parking are waived. And this is increasingly what some urban planners are recommending.

Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and author of the influential 2005 book, “The High Cost of Free Parking,” says “minimum parking requirements subsidize cars, increase traffic congestion and carbon emissions, pollute the air and water, encourage sprawl, raise housing costs, exclude poor people, degrade urban design, reduce walkability and damage the economy.”

But eliminating minimum parking requirements risks turning neighboring residential streets into a scene that resembles the parking lot of Dodger Stadium when the Giants are in town.

Housing policy in California has discouraged the development of new single-family houses in outlying areas in favor of what planners call “infill,” the construction of high-density housing on vacant land in built-up areas. State law also speeds approval of “transit-oriented development,” mega-projects located within a half-mile of a train station or a bus stop with frequent service during peak hours.

Urban planners have a vision that people will respond to unbearable traffic and parking problems by choosing to give up their cars. To make their vision work, some favor a ban on parking lots at transit stations. Ben Schiendelman, who writes a blog at TheUrbanist.org where the posts have titles like “Bike Lanes are Social Justice,” wrote recently, “for every parking space we build at a transit station, we’re encouraging a new car-oriented suburban housing unit, demand for suburban shopping and suburban road extension to serve them.”

But everybody’s different, and in a free country, they’re allowed to be. Some people want to live in a 500-square-foot apartment in a downtown high-rise where the first floor tenant is a Moroccan-fusion restaurant with poetry readings and an all-day happy hour. Other people want to be far away from those people.

Some people want a house with a yard for the dog and the kids, and they don’t want to hear their neighbors’ footsteps through the ceiling.

People work hard in this country to get what they want. And they get pretty upset when the government changes all the rules and robs them of the enjoyment of their property, as when a “spot-zoned” mega-development turns a quiet street into a permanently jammed parking lot.

Urban planners may call that NIMBYism, but Sir William Blackstone called it the fundamental right of individuals to own and enjoy their property.

Blackstone was a strong influence on the minds that wrote the U.S. Constitution, which is structured to protect the rights of individuals against those who claim to speak for the greater good.

“We are poisoning our cities with too much parking,” said UCLA’s Shoup. “Removing minimum parking requirements may be the cheapest and simplest way to achieve a more just society.”

Ivory towers never need parking lots.

Susan Shelley is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. Reach her atSusan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter: @Susan_Shelley.

This 81 unit Apartment Building in Portland, Oregon in the background is being built nextdoor to bungalows on a tree lined street. The apartment build has no parking spaces for it's tenants in the belief that the tenants will ride bicycles or take public transit as preferred means of transportation. 

From WSJ.com

Washington's 'Fair Housing' Assault on Local Zoning

Our experience in Westchester shows what the country can expect from a new federal discrimination rule.

By ROBERT P. ASTORINO

Do you think it is a good idea to give the Department of Housing and Urban Development unchecked power to put an apartment building in your neighborhood? HUD has proposed a new rule that could do just that.

In July, HUD published its long-awaited proposal on "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" in the Federal Register. It is a sweeping set of land-use regulations that has attracted little national attention. The agency wants the power to dismantle local zoning so communities have what it considers the right mix of economic, racial and ethnic diversity. A finding of discriminatory behavior, or allegations of discrimination, would no longer be necessary. HUD will supply "nationally uniform data" of what it thinks 1,200 communities should look like.

Local governments will have to "take meaningful actions to further the goals identified." If they fail to comply, HUD can cut federal funding. Westchester County north of New York City has firsthand experience of what the rest of the nation can expect.

HUD and Westchester are battling over local zoning that arose from a 2009 settlement (signed by my predecessor) to build 750 affordable-housing units in 31 mostly white communities. Westchester is well ahead of schedule in meeting these obligations. Almost 400 units have financing and 124 are already occupied. But HUD isn't satisfied because it wants to control local zoning and remake communities.

HUD has told Westchester that any limits on the size, type, height and density of buildings are "restrictive practices."

It demands that the county sue its localities over such common zoning regulations, which are not exclusionary by any stretch of the imagination. If HUD can define what constitutes exclusionary practices, then local zoning as it is known today disappears. Apartments, high rises or whatever else the federal government or a developer wants can be built on any block in America.

This is not hyperbole. Consider that HUD's list of "restrictive practices" includes limits on density even around reservoirs that supply drinking water to New York

City's eight million residents. Who knew ensuring clean water was discriminatory?
HUD's power grab is based on the mistaken belief that zoning and discrimination are the same. They are not. Zoning restricts what can be built, not who lives there.

In the 1970s, New York's highest court, in cases known as the Berenson decisions, established rules for what constitutes exclusionary zoning. Westchester's municipalities either voluntarily or through legal challenges have complied with these judicial rules. Any local zoning code also remains open to legal challenge. There are long-standing legal standards by which local zoning is judged and continually reviewed.

As required by HUD, Westchester County analyzed all 853 local zoning districts in February 2012. It found no evidence of exclusionary practices based on race or ethnicity. The county's conclusion was supported in a separate analysis by John R. Nolon, an affordable-housing expert at Pace University's Land Use Law Center.

HUD rejected the findings and cut off $17 million of federal funds to the county. The county prepared seven additional analyses, each one exploring more data as demanded by HUD. But as many times as HUD attempted to move the goal posts, the findings did not change. There is no evidence that zoning requirements on things like building size and height are racially exclusionary.

Last month HUD finally demanded—without presenting any facts—that the county accept its conclusion that there is exclusionary zoning in Westchester as a condition of releasing the funds. The agency's demand flies in the face of the July 31 "report card" issued by James E. Johnson, the federal monitor hired by HUD to oversee its 2009 affordable housing settlement. Mr. Johnson found no evidence of exclusionary zoning based on race or ethnicity.

Westchester is proudly the fourth most diverse county in New York in its population of African-Americans and Hispanics. Hispanics are the county's fastest-growing ethnic group, increasing in every community in the last census. The number of African-Americans continues to grow in contrast to an exodus from many areas in the Northeast. But HUD won't budge. Its vision for remaking neighborhoods depends on gaining control of local zoning.

The $17 million that HUD is withholding include Community Development Block Grants to help needy residents with neighborhood revitalization, new playgrounds and sidewalks, programs to prevent homelessness and, ironically, affordable housing. Westchester has sued the federal government to release these funds. Our claim is that HUD is unfairly holding hostage the communities and nonprofit agencies that administer those programs in its fight with the county. A federal judge dismissed Westchester's claim last month, saying HUD's ruling was written in a way that "excludes it from judicial review." The lawsuit is now before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

HUD has no idea how much its new rule will cost, or whether it will even work. The only economic analysis HUD has provided concerns how much it will cost communities to comply with the paperwork. HUD estimates $3 million to $9 million. The agency has not published any estimate of other effects, such as on local real-estate markets or local budgets. As stated in the Federal Register, "HUD cannot quantify the benefits and costs of policies influenced by the rule."

HUD is asking for comments on its new rule by Sept. 17. If elected officials and citizens do not want to cede control of their streets, neighborhoods and open space to Washington, now is the time to say so.

Mr. Astorino is the Westchester County executive.

Editor's Note:  Marin is under a similar agreement with HUD and Marinwood-Lucas Valley is the "test market" for implementing the changes.  We have written extensively about it.  Click on the "HUD" category in the right hand column for more info.

Government Creating Chaos: Less On Street Parking/Denser Population

November 27, 2015 By Stephen Frank 3 Comments

How do you create the slums, crimes, ghettos and chaos of New York City> Easy, get rid of on street parking, take car lanes and make them bike lanes, then increase the density of housing—put more people into a smaller space—just for the heck of it, knowing that these conditions are the perfect storm for economic disaster. This guarantees the poor in crime areas, the middle class leave the area and the rich live in suburbs and penthouses.

“One of the old standbys of the Car Cult zealots is the cry that we can’t put in bike lanes, or wider sidewalks, or Complete streets treatments, if they will remove so much as a single curbside parking spot for cars. Likewise, calls for denser development, especially if accompanied by reduced parking requirements, inspire the usual bug-eyed rage and teeth-baring barks of,“Where will all the cars park?”

As President Reagan famously said, government is not the solution, it is the problem.

Parking Madness

Written by Richard Risemberg, City Watch LA, 11/27/15

JUST SAYIN’–One of the old standbys of the Car Cult zealots is the cry that we can’t put in bike lanes, or wider sidewalks, or Complete streets treatments, if they will remove so much as a single curbside parking spot for cars. Likewise, calls for denser development, especially if accompanied by reduced parking requirements, inspire the usual bug-eyed rage and teeth-baring barks of, “Where will all the cars park?”

Yet, it happens that most parts of most cities have far too much parking, and that parking helps create traffic congestion (through induced demand, especially when it’s offered at below-market pricing, or even free).  It also hurts development, making it too expensive for locally-owned businesses to establish themselves and enhance the health, wealth, and happiness of our communities—something corporate malls and bigbox stores simply cannot do (and don’t even want to).

The Pigeon’s own Josef Bray-Ali wrote an important article on this very matter a few years ago, which was published in the Los Angeles Business Journal. Alas, there it resides behind a paywall; but it’s been excerpted in another article posted by the Natural Resources Defense Council here. 

The NIMBYs, of course, want nothing more than fully-subsidized parking everywhere they might want to go—rather the attitude a three-year-old holds towards candy. The rest of us are to pay for the sequestration of that land from more productive use, as well as the costs—financial, social, environmental, and medical—that the resulting sprawl imposes on us all.

In regards to commercial establishments, the cry for more parking! is particularly focused: Black Friday—the day after tomorrow, counting from our publication date—is the day when all the parking lots and structures in America fill to overflowing with cars, “proving” that we need those gigantic asphalt wastelands to be reserved from any other use the other 364 days of the year.

The problem with that rationale is that is is so rarely true: most parking lots and structures, even at the most gargantuan of consumerist swamps, America’s declining malls, simply…don’t fill up.

And so, in response to the untested assumption underlying the NIMBY’s Black Friday battle cry, Strong Towns has for several years organized the Black Friday Parking event.

This is what you do to join in:

1) On Black Friday, go to a mall at peak shopping hour.

2) Wander the parking lot, smartphone or camera in hand.

3) When you see swathes of empty parking space—and odds are that you will—snap a picture.

4) Post said picture to social media with the hashtag #blackfridayparking and (preferably) location info.

That’s all it takes. A little dose of reality to help take the edge off the great American delusion about cars and parking.

California governor signs bill to ease parking requirements and create more affordable housing

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Mary Eveleigh

On Friday California Governor Jerry Brown signed into a law a bill that will help create more affordable housing by easing parking requirements for developers.

The legislation, Assembly Bill (AB) 744, Planning and Zoning: Density Bonus, will allow developers to request reduced minimum parking requirements within affordable housing projects. It also amends the parking ratio for affordable housing and senior housing to require no more the 0.5 parking spaces per unit, and amends the ratio for special needs housing to require no more than 0.3 parking spaces per unit.

Developers seeking to use these ratios must meet established guidelines regarding percentage of affordable units in the project, distance and access to a transit stop, availability of paratransit services, and access to fixed bus route services. The emphasis on transit access will bolster other efforts to make public transportation and active transportation options safer, more convenient, and more accessible for low-income families.

“AB 744 will enable a new wave of affordable housing development that was not previously feasible,” said Meea Kang, President of Domus Development and a Steering Committee member of LOCUS. “Real estate developers have long strived to build the affordable housing our communities demand, but parking restrictions and their ensuing construction costs have made these projects extremely difficult to finance. By lowering these restrictions, AB 744 will help California maintain its affordable housing capacity as our population grows and becomes increasingly diverse.”

The average above-ground parking space costs $24,000 to build. Below-ground parking spaces cost even more, at an average of $34,000 a piece. Regulations that require developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces — even if there is no market demand for them — can significantly increase a project’s costs. In the Bay Area, an estimated 31 percent of parking spaces at affordable housing developments go unused.

AB 477 was supported by a coalition of over 60 organizations and individuals, including Domus Development, LOCUS, Smart Growth America’s coalition partners Local Government Commission and TransForm, as well as Author Assemblymember Ed Chau, AARP, the American Planning Association, California Council for Affordable Housing, California Economic Summit, Enterprise Community Partners, Professor Donald Shoup of UCLA, Jeffery Tumlin of Nelson Nygaard, and Ethan Elkind of the Council of Infill Builders.

Easing parking minimums at affordable housing projects are a straightforward way for states to make these projects more financially feasible for developers and allows developers to put funds toward building more homes, rather than more parking spaces. A standard housing subsidy can fund roughly 6.5 times more units with no parking than units with two allocated spaces.

By signing AB 744 into law, California is setting a model for other states to follow in terms of innovative ways to build more affordable housing. For more information about the new legislation, see the full bill text or a fact sheet from the California legislature.

Editor's Note:  Planners and Governor Brown have this magical belief that if parking is eliminated, suddenly everyone will walk, bike or take transit.  What they ignore is the cold reality that people need to go work in many places other "job centers" in central cities.  These sorts of policies are the cruelest to laborers who often must rise early and travel far to work.  Check out this video trying to find parking in San Rafael's Canal district.

Parking Problems Plague Portland from Foolish Zoning Laws

Parking problem spreads in Portland

As more people move in, tensions rise over increasingly scarce spaces for cars

Nigel Duara

John Golden, an opponent of a plan to build a four-story apartment building that comes with no parking spaces, explains the potential fight for spaces if the building is constructed in Portland.

By Steven DuBois, Associated Press

Saturday, March 23, 2013

  

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Don Ryan

AP

A motorist passes an 81-unit apartment building under construction in Portland.

Don Ryan

AP

A bicyclist and motorist pass an 81-unit apartment building under construction in Portland.

Don Ryan

AP

A four-story, 81-unit apartment building under construction at right shares a quiet side street with older houses in Portland. The building will include scores of bicycle racks but not one parking space for automobiles.

PORTLAND — Though Portlanders are remarkably united when it comes to protecting the environment, a property on aptly named Southeast Division Street has provoked an unexpected backlash against the city's progressive approach to housing its burgeoning population.

The general reason for the controversy — insufficient parking. But how this got to be a problem on Division Street typifies Portland, a place proud of its plastic shopping bag ban and global warming "action plan" but still struggling with how to grow while staying green.

A developer, Dennis Sackhoff, last year demolished what had been the city's landmark lesbian bar and started construction on a four-story, 81-unit apartment building that will include scores of bicycle racks — but not one parking space for automobiles.

It's one of about 30 parking-free apartment buildings that have been recently completed or are in some stage of development in the city, mostly in the cozy neighborhoods on the east side, across the Willamette River from downtown.

Developers such as Sackhoff are capitalizing on one of the nation's tightest rental markets while following Portland zoning rules that require them to provide parking for bicycles but not cars.

The people who already live in these neighborhoods worry about increased traffic and an inability to find parking in front of their places. And though the apartments are intended for those with a bicycle-first mentality, most of the new tenants are not choosing a car-free existence.

"The developer says he is trying to give Portland what it says it wants, but in reality, Portland wants it both ways," said John Golden, a high school teacher trying to stop, or at least reduce, the size of another four-story apartment building in the works near his northeast Portland house.

Sackhoff, who declined to be interviewed, is the developer on that project, too.

Not easy being green

Portland has carefully charted a course that has made it one of the most environmentally friendly urban areas in the country. Its strategic planning emphasizes the use of alternative forms of transportation, such as light-rail, a streetcar, skateboarding and bicycles. A major bridge is under construction across the Willamette that will be off-limits to cars.

The zoning rules and planning goals that spawned the surge in parking-free apartments were meant to discourage people from owning cars and also entice developers to build apartments closer to downtown, limiting the type of farmland-devouring sprawl seen in many U.S. metropolitan areas.

Mayor Charlie Hales was on the City Council in 2002 when it approved a zoning change that allowed housing to be constructed without parking if it's within 500 feet of a bus or light-rail stop with frequent service. That's defined as an arrival every 20 minutes.

Hales said he envisioned developers building condominium- or townhouse-sized apartments on top of retail stores. He did not expect boxy, four-story buildings packed with studios and one-bedroom apartments.

For almost a decade, his vision was right. But then Portland found itself with an apartment shortage following the condominium boom and ensuing real-estate bust, and developers saw a chance to fill the desperate need.

Hales said he remains a champion of "density," a word you hear a lot in Portland, but the city has to make adjustments so that future buildings better "fit into the urban fabric."

"It is a good thing that we're building up and not out," Hales told The Associated Press. "But we also have to be pragmatic in the present day. People still own cars."

The city's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has proposed that developers of larger buildings — those with at least 40 units — include at least one parking space for every four units. Hales said he has yet to decide if that's the right target.

Joe Zehnder, Portland's chief planner, said the city is looking for a middle ground that takes some pressure off of streets like Division but does not create so much parking that the city is one day awash in unused spaces.

Car-sharing programs are proliferating and the national trend, especially for younger people, shows a decline in vehicle ownership, he said.

Justin Wood, a developer and associate director of the Home Builders Association of Metro Portland, said Zehnder's idea is a good compromise for a city that wants to limit sprawl, steer people away from driving and have relatively affordable apartments.

According to city estimates, it costs developers $3,000 per space for surface parking, $20,000 per space for structured parking and $55,000 per space for underground parking. Wood notes that many of the planned buildings are on small lots, making it a challenge to install parking spaces.

Distaste for suburbia

Wood said he wouldn't like to see a four-story building with no parking rise next to his house. But the only other way the city could handle the newcomers is to embrace the suburban-style growth that makes most Portlanders cringe.

"You're not going to stop people from moving to Portland," he said.

City leaders want to see them in neighborhoods with a mix of residential and commercial structures, so people can be a quick walk or bike ride away from restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores.

A city survey of residents in the parking-free buildings found that 72 percent own cars, but only half that many drive to work. They keep a vehicle for trips across town or weekend getaways.

Ryan McGuire, 30, moved to Portland from St. Paul, Minn., last year and lives in the 50-unit Irvington Garden Apartments. The building in northeast Portland has more than 50 bike racks but no parking. McGuire said he and his girlfriend both have bikes and share one car. As the city survey suggests, McGuire said he keeps a car to go snowboarding and "haul stuff."

On-street parking also does not appear to be that difficult to find on Division Street, the epicenter of the apartment boom. Ample spaces were found during three recent visits to the neighborhood, on different days and at different times.

That, however, will likely change when more of the planned apartment buildings reach completion, including the 81-unit building that is the largest project on what has become a trendy stretch of the city. Construction on that building has stopped, at least temporarily, because of an Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals ruling that involves a technicality unrelated to the lack of parking.

Elisabeth Varga, who lives near the building and was one of the people who filed the Appeals Board complaint, emphasized that she and other opponents favor density, as long as it's done responsibly.

Zehnder, the city planner, said Portland's policy goals of becoming less car-dependent while growing taller instead of wider appear to be working, but he understands why it may be alarming to residents such as Varga.

"Now you're seeing it," he said of the density. "And it's one thing to think it hypothetically, it's one thing to see it happen and it's another thing entirely to see it happen as much at one time as they're seeing it on Division."

Editor's Note:  The "smart growth" planning fad began about twenty years ago in Portland, Oregon.  The city has been on a massive building binge of "compaction and densification" inside the "urban growth boundaries. The city is upzoning suburban areas with apartment buildings destroying suburban neighborhoods (aka "Sprawl" to the chic set) in the belief that people will take more mass transit.  We can expect upzoning to come along the "101 Urban Corridor" now pushed by Susan Adams and the rest of the Board of Supervisors.  Replacing our suburbs with dense urban living is the ultimate objective of Plan Bay Area.

81 unit building on a tree lined street with no parking.